In May 2009 the Justice
Department announced that it was dropping its case against Steve Rosen (below) and
Keith Weissman, two former staffers of the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee (AIPAC), who had been indicted in 2005 for espionage. In its analysis
of the Justice Department announcement, the Wall Street Journal opined
that

This prosecution needs to be understood in the context in [sic]
the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the swirl of conspiracy theories about
"neocon" influence over U.S. policy. In this bizarro reading of events,
President Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice chose to invade
Iraq due to the influence of Jewish officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Doug
Feith, Scooter Libby, and Richard Perle. One sign of those times: In the
immediate aftermath of Mr. Franklin's arrest, CBS's Lesley Stahl asked whether
"Israel [used] the analyst to try to influence U.S. policy in the war in
Iraq?" In other words, the AIPAC case resembled a political hit more than
a legitimate "espionage" case.

Missing from the Wall
Street Journal's analysis was any consideration of how Defense Department
analyst Larry Franklin could go to prison for passing government secrets to
Mssrs. Rosen and Weissman, but how Rosen and Weissman could get off scot free
for receiving them. Missing from the Journal's report, in other words,
was any honest analysis of the clout of the Israel Lobby in American politics.

Representatives of the
two parties try to outdo themselves in their praise for America's allegedly
most trustworthy and morally pure ally in the Middle East, deserving of
unqualified American support against the forces of Islamic evil. But what is
the reality of the Israeli-American relationship? Israel and the Clash of
Civilisations takes a critical look at America's and Israel's plan to
remake the Middle East, bringing out the sordid and destructive impact of this
endeavor.

The book's author,
Jonathan Cook, is a British freelance journalist based in Arab city of
Nazareth, Israel, who covers developments in the Middle East and is especially
noteworthy for his courage to report on the dark side of Israeli policy. In
this work, Cook deals with the taboo topic of the close connection between the
neoconservatives and the state of Israel. In the land of the free, a focus on
this subject is certain to bring on the most lethal smear of
"anti-Semitism" and cause all respectable folks to run for cover so
as to avoid being tarred by the same deadly brush. Cook, however, dauntlessly
points out that the neocons were the driving force for American Middle East
policy and that the aim was to the destabilize and fragment Israel's enemies in
order to enhance the Jewish state's security—obviously, the weaker ones enemies
the better. Cook brings out how this was a geostrategic policy that had a long
history in Israel, especially among the Israeli Right. Cook makes reference to
the policy paper by Oded Yinon in the early 1980s, which best articulates this
fragmentation strategy, and, of course, is never mentioned by the American
mainstream media.

The occupied territories have
served as a laboratory for Israel to test the dissolution strategy. It was
obvious that the most effective way to control the Palestinians was to keep
them factionalized and fighting each other. Israel facilitated this development
by supporting the Islamicist Hamas when the secular nationalist PLO was
dominant, and then switching to backing the PLO when Hamas had achieved
superiority. Moreover, the dissolution of Israel's external enemies was
inextricably related to the perceived Palestinian demographic threat to the
Jewish state, and the Israeli need to counter this. Cook writes that
"Remaking the Middle East by dissolving the main Arab and Muslim states
would ensure not only Israel's domination of the region but Israel's
unchallenged right to continue the creeping process of ethnic cleansing of the
occupied Palestinian territories." (p. 115)

Although the neocons
essentially adopted the geostrategy of the Israeli Right, Cook contends that
the neocons were not merely agents or tools of Israel but rather that the
relationship between the neocons and Israel was dynamic in nature. "Israel
did not simply sell a vision to the neocons and then seek its
implementation," Cook writes. "The neocons were persuaded of the
basic Israeli strategy for dominating the Middle East (and that it was in both
parties' interests), and then set about devising their own policies to realise
these goals. It is quite possible, on this reading, that at times Israel found
itself being dictated to by the neocons, or pushed to deliver on promises it
struggled in practice to attain." (p. 93)

Undoubtedly, the
neocons did not simply parrot the position of the government in power in Israel
but rather had their own particular policy to enhance Israeli security.
Sometimes their policies were more extreme and riskier than the governments in
Israel, even right-of-center governments, were willing to implement. For
example, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refrained from carrying out the
militant strategy proposed by the neocons in their "Clean Break"
agenda presented to him in 1996, which called for Israel to take militant steps
to destabilize its Middle East enemies. (Of course, the neocons were able to
persuade the Bush administration to carry out a very similar policy in attacking
Iraq in 2003). Furthermore, in launching the attack on Lebanon in the summer of
2006, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refrained from taking the drastic measures
that the neocons hoped would bring Syria and Iran into the fray and thus
provide a casus belli for the United States to enter the conflict on the
side of Israel.

While Cook appears very
perceptive in describing the neocon/Israel policy, it is less clear that he
fully understands the neocons' motives—an understandable weakness since his
expertise is on the Middle East rather than on the neoconservatives. (As noted
by the title, the focus of the book is on Israeli policy rather than a detailed
account of the neocons.) While Cook definitely points out the neocons'
pro-Israel orientation, he implies that the neocons were also truly concerned
about the United States (more accurately, the American empire)—that they had
"good reason" to believe that the fragmentation of Israel's Middle
East enemies would be beneficial to the US. (p. 121) In fact, sometimes Cook
makes it appear that for the neocons Israel was simply the instrument to
advance American imperial interests. "The Middle East, with its huge oil
wealth, was at the heart of their designs, and Israel—as Washington's closest
ally in the region—was, in their view, the key to American success." (p.
25) But Cook provides very questionable evidence to substantiate this claim.
First, he maintains that by taking over Iraq and Iran the United States and its
Western allies would gain access to cheap oil. But there was actually no good
reason for such a belief. Experts predicted just the opposite for Iraq, with
the likelihood of a high degree of chaos prevailing that would stifle oil
production. It is quite understandable that oil companies would see no value in
investing in a destabilized region where there was a high likelihood that their
investment would be destroyed. Prior to 9/11, the representatives from the oil
companies were generally pushing for an end of sanctions against Iran and Iraq.
The most reasonable answer why the neocon vision of cheap oil was not generally
accepted by those with expertise on the matter was that it appeared untrue,
which turned out to be the case.

The idea that attacking
Iran would somehow bring cheap oil has not been expressed by the neocons. For
regarding Iran, the focus is on a bombing campaign not a land force occupation.
And the general belief in America is that such a conflagration would cause oil
prices to spike due to Iran's likely ability to close down the vital Straits of
Hormuz water passage for oil tankers. Even some neocons—such as Norman
Podhoretz and Charles Krauthammer—have acknowledged that an American bombing
attack would lead to significant oil price rises but claim that the grave
Iranian threat to the US justifies the risk.

Cook also claims that
the Middle East policy was directed toward control of China. Cook implies that
the dominant groups in the administration had given up the goal of integrating
nations of the world in a "rule-based" liberal capitalist order. But
it is not apparent that corporate interests had given up their belief in global
capitalism, and American imports from China continued to climb. Moreover, it
was not clear how the US would gain "direct control" over these oil
fields of the Middle East so as to reduce or eliminate oil exports to America's
enemies such as China. Control of Middle Eastern oil for American global
strategic interests would be a long-term operation and would presuppose a
permanent American occupation, making the American-controlled Iraq resemble the
World War II-era Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo or Soviet-controlled
Eastern Europe. No lesser control would suffice, since there could be no
guarantee that even a friendly semi-independent Iraqi government would pursue
an oil policy that would sacrifice its own economic well-being for American
global strategy. Such an extended occupation would require extensive planning
and involve colossal expense. There is no evidence that before the war the Bush
Administration ever considered the requisite long-term occupation, much less
planned for it. As it is, instead of advancing any type of strategy of global
hegemony, the fact that the American military has been bogged down in the
Middle East makes it less able to intervene in other strategic areas or even
threaten such intervention, a situation brought out by various military and
national security experts.

This reviewer, whose
expertise is just the reverse of Cook's—more on the neocons than on Israeli
policy—believes that the evidence clearly shows that the lodestar of
neoconservative Middle East policy was Israeli security, or, better stated, the
neocons' view of Israeli security. Quite obviously, neoconservatism emerged in
the early 1970s to enhance perceived Jewish interests—the very flagship of the
neocon movement during its first decades being Commentary magazine,
which pronounced as its mission: "To safeguard the welfare and security of
Jews in the United States, in Israel, and throughout the world." As Murray
Friedman notes in The
Neoconservative Revolution: Jewish Intellectuals and the Shaping of Public
Policy, "A central element in [Norman] Podhoretz's evolving views
[in the early 1970s], which would soon become his and many of the neocons'
governing principle was the question, 'Is It Good for the Jews,' the title of a
February 1972 Commentary piece." (Friedman, p. 147) A cursory analysis
of the neocons' backgrounds shows their close identification with Israel. It is
not apparent that they would better understand how to facilitate American
access and control of Middle East oil than James Baker, Brent Scowcroft,
Zbigniew Brzezinski, representatives of the oil companies, and other members of
the traditional foreign policy establishment who rejected the neocons'
nostrums. It is obviously apparent is that what distinguishes the neocons from
the aforementioned groups and individuals is their close identification with
Israel. In short, neocons supported Israel because they truly want to enhance
Israel's interests, as they perceive those interests. This is not to say that
the neocons were consciously disloyal to the US but rather that they saw
American interests through the lens of Israeli security—what was good for
Israel was, ipso facto, considered to be good for the United States. One
can understand how someone who is not an American and does not reside in
America could find it hard to believe that a small group devoted to a foreign
country could set American foreign policy in a strategic part of the globe.
Undoubtedly, this is something that one must see in practice to believe. (The
continual profession of all-out support for Israel by the 2008 presidential
candidates should help to make this view understandable.)

Despite these caveats
about the motivations for the neocons' policy prescriptions, it should be
emphasized that the bulk of the book deals with Israeli policy and that it is
in this area that Cook especially shines. For example, Cook points out that
Israel's strike on Lebanon was more than simply retaliation for the abduction
of its soldiers. Plans for an invasion were already in the offing, the
kidnapping serving only as a "triggering" event. Hezbullah formed a
strong deterrent to Israel's ability to invade and dominate Lebanon, and Israel
hoped to eliminate that impediment. And if Israel had been successful in
eradicating Hezbullah, it would have attacked Syria. However, Cook maintains,
Hezbullah's ability to fire numerous rockets into northern Israel sapped
Israel's morale and thus prevented the war's expansion. Interestingly, Cook
maintains that, contrary to the Western media's portrayal, Hezbullah's rockets
were aimed at military targets instead of being an indiscriminate attack on
civilians, and many actually did hit their targets.

All and all, Cook has
provided an excellent, informative work countering the half-truths and total
distortions of the American mainstream media. He does not profess to discern
the ultimate outcome of the militant American-Israel policy in the Middle East,
but he recognizes that it will not be the idyllic democratic world depicted by
its advocates. "The only certainty," writes Cook, "was that, if
the West carried out with its 'war on terror,' there would be no victory—only
'war without end.'" (p. 149) Obviously, such an outcome would be
horrendous for the United States and for the world in general, but a "war
without end" among fragmented Arab/Islamic states with the United States
intimately involved is exactly what the Israeli Right, and most likely the
neoconservatives, actually seek. And it is only by revealing and publicizing
this tabooed truth that the looming catastrophe can be avoided.

Abu Ghraib and The American Empire, an e-book by E. Michael Jones. Invited to speak on torture at Valparaiso University, E. Michael Jones found his time cut in half. His original plan (to show Israeli influence at Abu Ghraib) required first showing feminist complicity in the torture at Abu Ghraib. Cut in half, his presentation ended with feminism -- with Barbara Ehrenreich's claim that "a uterus is no substitute for a conscience" -- which enraged the lady professors at Valparaiso. He only told half the story at Valpariso. You can read the full story in this e-book: a compelling analysis of feminist complicity in torture, Israeli influence at Abu Ghraib, and The American Empire championed by neocons. $2.99. Read
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